China and India Increase Voting Rights in World Bank

Monday, April 26th, 2010

In a reflection of the growing shift in world economic growth and power, China and India increased their voting rights in the World Bank, with China rising up to third place and India to seventh place.

Before the most recent change, China and India each had 2.77 percent voting rights. Now China has increased their rights to 4.42 percent and India to 2.91 percent.

Only the United States and Japan are now ahead of China, while they and Germany, France and the United Kingdom are those left with more voting rights than India.

There are two ways to gain voting rights in the World Bank. One is a guaranteed voting right which is the same for all countries by virtue of joining the organization, and secondly, voting rights are granted based on how much a particular country contributes financially to the World Bank.

As far as an overall block, emerging countries and developing nations are have been pushing for a larger voice in the organization, and there has been a preliminary agreement reached to increase their voting power by 3.13 percent from before, which would bring the total for the developing world to 47.19 percent.

While this is only a preliminary agreement as far as adding the 3.13 percent to the voting of developing countries, most think it's a foregone conclusion that it will pass when brought to a vote in the near future.